Editor's note: This post was updated on October 2026 to reflect current Display & Video 360 functionality and changes in the privacy landscape.
In the early days of online advertising, buyers had to send out RFPs and wade through countless rounds of emails and contract negotiations to purchase ad space on websites. This process required an immense amount of time and resources.
When programmatic buying came along, it brought with it a bevy of benefits, including improved workflow, lower CPMs, measurable performance, and the ability to target audiences directly. However, it didn’t guarantee the same inventory as going directly to a publisher.
Google Display & Video 360 (DV360) offers inventory and publishers across guaranteed and non-guaranteed buying types in a single tool, including private auctions, preferred deals, and Programmatic Guaranteed deals. Since you’ll still have the flexibility to choose which option to use, it’s important to understand the definitions, differences and best use cases for each.
Private auctions in DV360
A non-guaranteed private auction (PA) is a one-publisher-to-multiple-advertisers relationship where the publisher makes a portion of their non-guaranteed inventory available for purchase at a negotiated minimum-floor price for each private buyer. The inventory goes to the highest bidder.
When to use?
- When you see a certain app or URL is performing well in the open marketplace
- When you want access to more premium inventory or unique ad formats than currently available in the open marketplace but without a spend commitment or fixed CPM
Preferred deals in DV360
A non-guaranteed preferred deal (PD) is an exclusive, advertiser-to-publisher relationship for programmatically purchasing inventory with first-look access to custom inventory at a fixed CPM.
When to use?
- When you have specific publishers on which to serve ads but no spend commitments
- When you don’t want to worry about the actualized CPM of a specific publisher
Programmatic Guaranteed deal
Programmatic Guaranteed deals (PG) provide an automated buying solution with tagless trafficking, advanced targeting and consolidated reporting and billing. Programmatic guaranteed deals allow you to execute direct buys with publishers while eliminating manual processes.
When to use?
- When you want to lock in the same inventory as a direct buy, such as a homepage takeover
- When you want to ease into programmatic buying while maintaining the same buy you currently have
How do private auctions, preferred deals, and Programmatic Guaranteed deals compare?
Here's how the three deal types stack up side by side:
| |
Private auction |
Preferred deal |
Programmatic Guaranteed |
| Pricing |
Negotiated floor price, highest bidder wins |
Fixed CPM |
Negotiated directly with the publisher |
| Guaranteed inventory |
No |
No |
Yes |
| Spend commitment |
No |
No |
Yes |
| Relationship |
One publisher, multiple buyers |
One publisher, one buyer, with first-look access |
One publisher, one buyer |
| Best for |
Scaling apps or sites that already perform well in the open marketplace |
Buying from specific publishers at a predictable price |
Locking in direct-buy placements like homepage takeovers |
Benefits of running deals in DV360 over direct buys
There are multiple reasons to consider running deals in Display & Video 360 versus buying direct. These benefits apply to all deal types:
- Consolidation of billing, planning, measurement, and attribution
- Control of launch and activation
- Cohesive, real-time view of media spend, detailed historical data, and unique insights
- Target or exclude first- or third-party audience lists
- Ability to apply a single-frequency cap across open auction and reservation deals, leading to a higher reach and lower impression waste
- Reduce the complexity of your media mix
- Simplified measurement studies due to platform consolidation
- Shop, negotiate, and compare inventory packages and deals in the Display & Video 360 Marketplace
- Reduced errors from manual trafficking and invoicing with automated tagging and trafficking
- Pass on reservation impressions to meet a campaign-level frequency goal
Non-guaranteed private auctions and preferred deals and Programmatic Guaranteed deals also come with their own benefits over traditional direct buys.
Private auction and preferred deal benefits
- Optimizations can be made in bulk
- Easily shift media spend between inventory sources
- Start and stop deals without spend commitments or contracts
- Access to essential inventory and formats like standard IAB sizes, native, video, audio, run of site, and run of category at lower CPMs
- Pacing thresholds can be controlled by your team
- Control of brand safety and other targeting specifications
Programmatic Guaranteed deal benefits:
- Terms and conditions can be held in DV360 rather than emails or PDFs
- Streamlined workflow for setup and management
- Simplified access to premium inventory like homepage takeovers, sponsorships, section buyouts, and newsletters
Deals do take some care to keep spending. Two of the most common deal setup mistakes we see are leaving "Target new exchanges" switched on, which lets a deal line item drift into open auction inventory, and applying an automated bid strategy to a line item that only targets deal IDs. We also upload and assign creatives before a deal's start date so they clear review in time. When a deal underdelivers, the Troubleshooter tab in DV360 shows where impressions are being filtered out, and our guide to troubleshooting a line item that isn't spending covers the rest.
What the research says about programmatic deals
As a company with a self-professed “data obsession,” it should come as no surprise that we’ve crunched the numbers. After all, what’s a list of benefits without real-world results to back them up?
- eMarketer forecasts that programmatic direct will account for 76.3% of US programmatic ad spending in 2026, and 50.4% when social is excluded.
- In connected TV, 99.5% of programmatic spend in the ANA's Q1 2025 Programmatic Transparency Benchmark ran through deal IDs in private marketplaces.
- The ANA's Q1 2026 benchmark found that higher-performing advertisers operated with significantly more concentrated supply footprints than lower performers.
- Once waste was accounted for, those higher performers paid $7.46 per thousand qualified impressions, compared with $19.04 for the lower-performing group.
Where direct buying fits in a programmatic plan
Despite the benefits inherent in programmatic advertising, direct buying isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, as privacy regulations expand and browsers like Safari and Firefox continue to block third-party cookies by default, direct publisher relationships and cleaner supply paths carry more weight than ever. Luckily, advertisers no longer have to fear these types of changes or choose between the convenience of programmatic advertising and the control of direct buying when they run deals in Display & Video 360.
Ready to get started? We'd love to talk.
